Dinoproject 04- Sauropods

Every time I get a gap like this I battle the idea that I’ve lost all my creativity and come up with some mad project idea to restart myself, that I dont finish because by the time I’ve thought it through something else has popped up again. One off illustrations and concepts can satiate this I guess, but one-offs don’t feel as satisfying as a good meaty project.

So, since I have the gap, I’m reviving the dino project. It’s massively comfort-zoney but that’s what I need at the moment. TBH I’ve had an entire career of stuff outside of my comfort zone, any excuse to draw comfy dinosaurs is a good excuse in my books.

Previous blog posts RE Dinoproject can be found starting here . Boy am I glad I wrote a lot of that down in an easy to find place! The guts are the same, more or less, though I have a firmer idea of how to approach it on a broader level than I did back in December – mostly stuff like what the core pillars are. I want to be transparent about my process on here, but I’m going to keep the foundations to myself for now, so I dont over-expose them, kinda thing.

So, on with the show!

Still working through some art anxiety stuff, so it took me a while to feel like I knew what I was doing – though a couple of the more ‘clueless’ ones are cool to consider for a ‘wrong’ angle on paleoart. All of this is a little wrong, of course, but I’m talking cheap plastic toys/ Crystal Palace Iguanadon levels of wrong.

From those I picked out 8 I like on first impressions, or have parts which I like. Some are heavier than others- the sauropod I chose for this is actually pretty small, as far as sauropods go, so downplaying the legs-like-tree-trunks aspect may be handy in playing with scale and personality as time goes on.

Speaking of personality, Im not quite sure who this sauropod is, in the context of the ‘game’ they’re your home and your ‘ride’. They’d be kinda indifferent to you being there, I guess, but how they react to the world around them is important RE your experience of the world. I guess that kind of thing is something to look at next.

I suppose they would be relatively experienced- quite independent – independent enough to split from the herd a touch – but not a creature who has made the journey often enough to avoid trouble. Playful but not necessarily immature. Quite curious too, perhaps, and laid back enough not to give you too rough of a ride.